


Morning-Star Baker

by startingatmidnight



Category: Lucifer (TV), The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Baking, Baking with the Devil, Comedy, Do Not Try These Ingredient Substitutes At Home, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Season 5A Spoilers, Stress Baking, do not try any of these recipes at home unless i tell you they aren't completely lethal, no really this is a canon-compliant bake-off fic not an AU, seriously though i am about to commit some baking sins in this fic, why yes this IS a waste of good ao3 server space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28097979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startingatmidnight/pseuds/startingatmidnight
Summary: Chloe can break all of this down into a logical order.First she started dating the Devil. Then her ex-husband found out she was dating the Devil, and tried to murder him. Then the Devil, who has a kind of crystal-based friendship with her ex-husband, decided to try and win back that friendship by appearing as a contestant on her ex-husband's favourite television program―Actually, no. None of this can be broken down into a logical order. In fact, it's all actively insane. If she wasn't so busy eating a loaf of sourdough right now, she'd take some vacation time and go have her much-deserved and long-delayed nervous breakdown.Also she thinks Mary Berry might be a Satanist.Yep, here comes the nervous breakdown.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 24
Kudos: 101





	Morning-Star Baker

Everything started when Trixie started watching the show.

Well, no, that’s inaccurate. The real start came with it being _Dan’s_ favourite show, and Trixie isn’t _at_ Dan’s every week, so then she introduced it to―

Well, _no_ , all of this _really_ started when Dan tried to murder Lucifer―

No. That’s not right either. To unpuzzle this mess, she has to start at the start.

In the beginning, there was Mary Berry.

The Bake Off was with Mary Berry, and the Bake Off was Mary Berry. All things were baked by her, and without her was not anything baked that was baked. In her was ‘The Great British Baking Show’, or ‘The Great British Bake Off’ depending on if you were using a VPN on Netflix or not, and the Baking Show was the light of men.

One of those men was Dan. Dan had been a fan of the Bake Off for long enough that he’d started calling it ‘the Bake Off’ instead of ‘the Baking Show’. Back in the day, Chloe had either outright ignored it or fallen asleep watching it. It’s that kind of British show that has no loud noises or eventful occasions, just a lot of soothing anxiety-ridden accents, but Dan follows it as fastidiously as he does his fantasy football league.

And that’s never really been a problem until now.

It’s been four weeks since the, uh, eventful time of having your partner shot at by your ex, being kidnapped by your partner’s nutjob identical twin, and then being saved by both your partner _and_ your trigger-happy ex, right before your partner makes his way through three incredible words that make you both cry in the workplace.

All of this to say, Dan’s not spoken to her in a month, and Lucifer’s made a point of scheduling game night this week, which means that she’s not aware when Trixie turns up that Dan’s been binge-watching the show so much in his post-devil crisis that he’s managed to convert Trixie into a rabid fan.

“―And I promised I’d watch season six this week so we’d both be ready to watch season _seven next week_ ―”

“You can ask Lucifer nicely, alright?” Chloe taps her hands absently against her legs as the elevator rises. She frowns. “Although I’m not sure Lucifer _has_ a TV.”

“ _Nobody_ doesn’t have a TV,” Trixie says with certainty. The doors open and she walks out yelling. “Hi Lucifer! You have a TV, right?”

Chloe walks into the penthouse. She can’t see Lucifer, but Trixie has already made herself at home on the couch, next to the ornate charcuterie board.

“I said something about asking nicely, monkey.”

“Lucifer, do you have a TV, _please_?”

Lucifer descends from the bedroom, one eyebrow raised. “And good evening to you too, urchin. Planning on getting your sticky handprints all over it, are we?”

Trixie rolls her eyes. “I need to watch season six of the Baking Show this week so I can watch season seven with dad next week, so I have to watch at least three episodes tonight to keep up, so we _need_ to watch it.”

Lucifer makes a confused face at Chloe as he walks them both over to the couch, pouring her and Trixie a glass of Merlot and sitting down. Chloe puts Trixie’s glass on Lucifer’s side of the table before Trixie can grab for it, shrugging a shoulder as she sits beside her.

“Dan’s converted her,” she says. “Great British Baking Show. It’s good background if you don’t mind it.”

“It’s really fun,” Trixie insists. “Dad and I baked a madeira cake from it on Sunday, but it wasn’t as good as they did it ‘cause we got the eggs wrong.”

Lucifer makes a show of blinking in surprise. “You mean to say that he’s capable of operating an oven? Do we know the same man? His culinary skills _surely_ start and end at the word ‘microwaveable’.”

“C’mon, Lucifer! You’ll love it, it’s Dad’s favourite show.”

Lucifer’s amused expression is slowly fading into something drawn and uncomfortable. He tilts the wine glass in his hand uncertainly, and the crystal tied to his wrist glints in the evening light. “I assure you that Daniel and I share very little in common.”

“Ple-a-a-ase?”

Chloe has to admit, she should defend Lucifer from an uncomfortable situation right now and just insist they play _Risk_ as planned, but she’s so relieved that the kicked-puppy routine isn’t being pulled on _her_ that she doesn’t want to intervene. Lucifer looks to Chloe for support: she lifts the wine glass to her mouth and sips very slowly until he crumbles before the might of Trixie’s weapons-grade pleading.

“Very well, but in return I want to be sent photographic evidence of any future Espinoza baking failures.”

Trixie grins. “Deal.”

Lucifer rises, moves the chairs between the couch and the wall away, and settles down on the couch next to Chloe. He picks up a sleek remote from the table and clicks it into the seemingly thin air between them and the wall.

Part of the floor clicks and rises: a flatscreen that could rival some small cinema screens for size whirs from the ground and settles into place. Trixie’s eyes go wide, her grin threatening to eclipse her face. Lucifer finds the show and hands the remote to Trixie, who, in the wisdom of a tween whose father got her a smartphone too young, immediately locates the correct buttons on the fancy label-less remote to find the right season and press play.

The two presenters stand in a field, in front of a tent and a lineup of people in aprons.

“Twelve fresh bakers are preparing for battle, like warriors of old.”

“Warriors? No, worriers. As in, they’re worried- worriers.”

Trixie giggles as the presenters keep the joke running, and Lucifer offers them both the charcuterie board. Trixie constructs a small tower from her pile of selections, like she would with Lunchables, and Chloe picks out exactly three. She mouths a ‘thank you’ to Lucifer, jerking her head meaningfully to the TV. Lucifer waves her thanks off, replacing the board on top of the Risk box and sipping his Merlot. The presenters sign off into the credits sequence.

“Welcome to a brand new series of― the Great British Bake Off!”

Trixie frowns. “Bake Off? That’s what they call the show in England.”

“I did a favour for a BBC executive,” Lucifer says. “I have his private login for the internal media system. Much nicer than bothering with subscription services.”

Chloe wasn’t always this good at reading between the lines of Lucifer’s comments, but she’s gotten there over the years.

“…That wasn’t the favour you called in, was it.”

“Oh, no, that favour’s still outstanding, but he’s one of those humans that keeps all his passwords on a post-it note where just anyone could see. Can you believe all of his accounts had ‘password123’ as the password? Even his PornHub Premium.”

Chloe narrows her eyes at him. Trixie shushes them both.

“ _Shh_ , they’re introducing the contestants!”

It’s about as Chloe remembers it being when Dan used to watch it: which is to say, it’s kind of boring but in the relaxing, easy-to-tune-out way. Trixie’s getting invested already in who’s making what and which contestants have cats or dogs in their introductory video, so Chloe opts instead for drinking and snuggling comfortably into Lucifer. Lucifer takes a while to grasp that she’s snuggling into him and not trying to push him further down the couch, but once he gets the concept he places an arm around her shoulders and leans into her subtly.

Trixie was given the ‘Lucifer and I are together’ talk a fortnight ago, which went better than expected, but it had to be immediately followed up by the ‘Trixie asked Dan if Lucifer was coming to parents’ evening and now I have to find a way to explain why Lucifer won’t be coming without saying that Dan shot Lucifer four days ago’ talk. Lucifer clearly doesn’t yet feel comfortable about this sort of casual closeness, let _alone_ with an audience, but it’s all about slow introduction. Trixie’s too enthralled by the show to notice anyway.

By the first ten minutes of earnest English accents and baking, Chloe’s already downed her glass and is starting to feel British-cooking-show-sleepy. Lucifer, however, is watching closely. Not with the rapt attention and occasional commentary that Trixie provides, but with a line appearing between his eyebrows, as if attempting to solve a puzzle.

“What does Daniel like about this?” Lucifer asks, apropos of nothing. Chloe blinks over at him, frowns, but his attention is firmly on the screen. Trixie shrugs.

“I don’t know,” Trixie says easily. “I guess it’s kind of the same every time, but different, you know? Like how he likes Queer Eye and football and Property Brothers. You know kinda what you’re gonna get.”

With that kind of ammo, and how Lucifer’s been since Dan found out, Chloe expects Lucifer to chime in with something amused and insulting. Instead, he frowns more.

“Then why do _you_ like it?”

Trixie shrugs. “I like baking.”

Chloe didn’t think anything of it in the moment, but in extreme hindsight, this had been her only chance to see Lucifer’s train of thought had derailed and to nudge him back onto the tracks. Unfortunately, she instead takes her precious chance and uses it to get sleepy-tipsy and nestle herself into Lucifer’s absurdly wide shoulder, dozing off to the sounds of British bakers being judged for their inadequate Black Forest Gateau.

* * *

The thing is, Lucifer’s been really unhappy about the whole ‘Dan knows he’s the Devil’ thing. Even moreso than Chloe expected. She knew that the two of them had a kind of frenemy thing going on, even a _friendship_ if you squinted at it funny, but she hadn’t anticipated that Dan shooting Lucifer would cause so much friction in the office. The slow slide into Lucifer and Dan becoming friends had taken so long that, by this point, she’d almost forgotten it had happened at all.

Lucifer still wears the crystal bracelet Dan gave him to work. Dan’s bracelet hasn’t reappeared, nor is it likely to. Since the zoo incident, Dan hasn’t threatened Lucifer’s life, or tried to shoot him, or told Chloe she should get away from him, but things have been frosty to say the least. Dan’s been avoiding talking to Chloe where not absolutely necessary. That’s fine, she can deal with that, but Dan’s frantic distrust of Lucifer keeps threatening to derail cases. Any evidence or theory or suggestion that Lucifer brings to a meeting is shot down or brought into question. They can’t get through an interrogation without Dan putting himself either in the room or behind the mirror, watching Lucifer like a hawk.

Lucifer’s responded in kind by loudly snarking at him from across the room, his insults gaining by the day in volume and juvenile pettiness, but she doesn’t think it’s escaped anyone’s notice that he very deliberately continues to say ‘Daniel’ instead of ‘Douche’. She’s tried to reassure Lucifer that Dan would come around, in time, but she’s starting to wonder if that’s true. She’d been in a very different position to Dan when she found out. So had Linda. She never really understood this friendship to begin with, let alone if it can be fixed.

Either way, it’s hit Lucifer hard. Having someone else that knows, that’s hostile to him… He doesn’t discuss it with Chloe, but his appointments with Linda are becoming more frequent.

In fact, they’re starting to become _alarmingly_ frequent.

And he stops saying where he’s going in exact terms.

He gets vague about it, leaves for it at weird times.

Almost as if he’s hoping she’ll _assume_ that whatever he’s doing is going to Linda’s.

She doesn’t want to derail the new and fragile thing that is their relationship by asking what he’s really doing, but she gets perilously close at one point, a few weeks post-Bake Off. She turns up to Lux on a Friday evening, a couple hours earlier than they’d scheduled. Dan’s picked Trixie up early so they can go to the movies, and she doesn’t want to just wander around doing nothing. Usually when she turns up to the penthouse unexpectedly, she can rely on him to be masturbating or wandering around naked or generally doing something sexual, but what she’s _not_ used to is Lucifer desperately trying to _pretend_ he’s doing something sexual.

Lucifer is dressed and decent, standing in front of the bar. There’s a small camera crew, a lighting rig, and a guy with a boom mic. Two producer-looking people are discussing something quietly over by the piano. Chloe’s walked in on Lucifer doing things that would be considered illegal the world over, but she’s never seen him look more mortified than right in this moment, at some nondescript boring-looking shoot. He smiles anxiously and sidesteps out of the cage of cameras and crew, striding over to her.

“Hello, Detective!” Lucifer’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. If she was going to guess his emotional state just by his expression, she’d have come to the conclusion that he was about to take a running leap at the balcony and fly to Australia.

“Hi,” she says. “Sorry I’m… early… uh, what is this?”

The producer people walk over: a short woman roughly in her sixties and a tall guy roughly in his thirties.

“Oh, wonderful! You must be Chloe Decker, Mr Morningstar’s told us so much. I’m Jen.”

Jen is British, airy, posh-sounding. She holds out her hand and Chloe shakes, smiling as politely as she can manage. Lucifer looks about ready to crawl out of his skin. The tall guy, similarly British, offers a handshake immediately after Jen stops talking.

“Markus, hi, Chloe. Are you joining us for the shoot?”

“She doesn’t like to be on camera,” Lucifer answers for her. Accurate or not, Chloe would have preferred to speak for herself, but before she can glare at him he starts up talking again. “Markus here was just regaling us with the details of his fine work on ‘Busty Gals Go Out on the Town’, weren’t you, Markus?”

Jen coughs politely. Now _Markus_ looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin. He shifts uncomfortably where he stands. “Yeah, _no_ , yeah, it’s, uh, been a _few years_ since then. Should we, um, get on with it?”

“If you insist,” Lucifer says briskly, unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up, looking down at his vest and going for the buttons. He glances up at her. “Are you staying, Detective?”

“We should probably keep that on right now, for continuity,” Jen says faintly as Lucifer takes off his vest. Chloe comes to the decision that she’d rather die than make small talk with porn producers and watch Lucifer get poshly directed through whatever boudoir filming session he’s scheduled, and she makes her escape with a hasty promise to come back later.

This, in hindsight, had been her second chance. The train had been by this point thoroughly derailed, but she could at least have hit the brakes on the thing.

* * *

She _really_ should have figured it all out when Lucifer and Ella’s three-week Star Wars marathon-a-thon had happened.

Because she _knows_ they’re not. Lucifer wouldn’t have agreed to three solid weekends of watching Star Wars media unless Ella’s life had depended on it.

Ella made Chloe get Letterboxd, and while Chloe never touches the app she gets constant push notifications because Ella logs every single film she watches. Ella _is_ logging the Star Wars films, because Ella knows to cover her tracks, but Chloe’s gotten paranoid at this point and she’s checked the timing of the logs against the runtime of the movies and it’s _massively_ inaccurate. By week three of Ella logging the Star Wars Holiday Special twenty minutes earlier than it would have ended, she prepares to confront Lucifer.

This is when everything goes to a Great British brand of Hell.

* * *

Trixie’s at Chloe’s this week. Trixie informs Chloe excitedly of the season premiere of Bake Off, which is tonight, the same time as games night, and she texts Lucifer apologetically an hour or so before they get there and asks him if he’s willing to make another baking-related sacrifice. Lucifer texts back a thumbs up and a devil emoji.

When they arrive at the penthouse, you would have thought he’d already known. The TV is already on, and customary snacks and wine have been nestled around a cake. Trixie squeals when she sees it, rushes up to it and stares into the mirror chocolate glaze. Chloe’s not really a cake person, but even she can admit it’s beautiful. It’s three-tier, dark glossy chocolate on the outside, with a single halved strawberry set onto the top. Lucifer emerges from the bedroom, looking for all the world like he hadn’t expected them.

“Ah, Detective, urchin, good evening,” he says, as if it’s all a nice surprise. Chloe’s been on a hair-trigger of paranoia for weeks, but something about this is setting off alarm bells in her head that she’s having to work very hard to ignore. It’s just a cake. He probably just bought it.

“Where’d you get this?!” Trixie says excitedly, reaching out and hovering her fingers above the glossy surface. Lucifer smiles proudly.

“I baked it, of course.”

Chloe chews the inside of her cheek as Trixie enthusiastically asks for details and Lucifer goes over to cut her a slice. Is it some kind of one-upmanship against Dan to prove himself a better baker? Is it just a nice gesture she’s reading too far into? Chloe would freely admit that she’s never baked a cake that hadn’t come from a box, and she knows Lucifer can cook, but she’s not sure that you can just whip up a three-tier cake with a shiny chocolate glaze in an hour.

She sits down on the couch: Lucifer hands her a glass of white wine, a slice of cake, and a fork.

“What kind of cake is it?” Chloe asks.

Lucifer smiles. “Who do you take me for?”

She takes a bite. It's devil’s food cake. It’s _delicious_ , which is _dangerous_ , because she already knows she’s going to eat way too much of it and regret it later. Clearly some of this reflected on her face, because Lucifer’s expectant smile widens.

“Verdict, judges?”

To his right, Trixie mumbles something incoherent with her mouth full, but it’s undeniably positive. Chloe nods in agreement.

“Really good,” she says. “It’s amazing, thank you.”

“Yes, well, in the absence of true experts, I suppose I’ll defer to your judgement.” He brushes them off with ease, but Chloe sees the way his smile turns small and genuine. She settles beside him, takes another bite of cake, nudges his shoulder with hers. He nudges her back, just a little.

Trixie wriggles impatiently in her seat. “It’s almost time, turn it on!”

Distantly, the taste of chocolate cake lingering on her tongue, Chloe’s putting it together. Lucifer hadn’t looked like he really understood the appeal of the show, last time, but he’d wanted to understand why Dan and Trixie liked it. Lucifer’s putting on a show of normality, however he can find a definition for it, because it’s how Dan does things. It’s an attempt to bridge a gap. It’s kind of sweet, in a slightly overcompetitive way.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t put the _rest_ of it together, which means that when the show starts, and she sees the field and the tent and the contestants lined up behind the presenters, Chloe misses her mouth with the wine glass and pours it on her shirt.

“Lucifer, what the _hell_?!”

**Author's Note:**

> In the 1400s there was Dante's Divine Comedy. In the 1700s there was Milton's Paradise Lost. In the 2000s there is startingatmidnight's "the biblical Devil, but the fictional version from the DC comic book, but the version from the police procedural TV adaptation, goes on the Great British Bake Off".
> 
> First, before everyone starts yelling at me at once, I’m SORRY. 
> 
> Second, you may have noticed some horrifying inaccuracies regarding the turnaround of real-world television filming schedules, particularly the Bake Off’s. These are intentional for Plot Purposes. Additionally, you can consider this season of Bake Off an AU where they never sold the format to Channel 4. If I had to write Modern Bake Off, with the correct judges and presenters, I’d have to confront a world in which Mr Spoon exists. I refuse to accept Mr Spoon as Bake Off Canon. This is a universe where Mary, Mel and Sue reign supreme.
> 
> Third and final, enjoy, and again, I'm sorry


End file.
